My work with the residents of the Mansion began as a great experiment for me. Like most people, I was busy living my life and paying my bills and trying to get my head straight.
I tended to ignore those places where the elderly came when they could no longer take care of themselves. I had no sense of what went on behind those usually landscaped and quiet doors.
It was my hospice volunteer work that brought the elderly to my attention, they were not what I expected. They are quite full of life and love and longing.
I started going to the Mansion, a Medicaid facility in my town once a week with Red, I got hooked there. I loved the staff, the aides with big hearts, Katie, then Morgan, now Kassi, the Mansion directors I’ve worked with, were all open to me and the work I wanted to do.
Each one is a remarkable person, they work unbelievably hard and care unbelievably much. When I think of all the difficulties I had working with some of the refugee groups, I think of the Mansion. I have never had a difficult moment there.
It was there I came to understand the proper scale, I call this work Practical Good In The Real World. We don’t make miracles, we will the holes in people’s lives when we can.
.They let me in, always supported my work, always welcome it, always trusted me to write honestly, never once tried to tell me what to say or see.
That is rarely true at most elderly care facilities or non-profit institutions. People like me wandering around make many administrators very nervous, just ask RISSE. The Mansion never has anything to hide or fear, always made me feel at home.
I had visited a lot of assisted care places by then, and the Mansion was/is unique.
For one thing, the setting is warm and home-like, no antiseptic Holiday-Inn like buildings with long corridors and shiny floors. Because it was a family home, it feels like one. Most of the people who go there get comfortable right away.
The Mansion was build as a mansion for the very wealthy McLellan family, and it has a warm and home-like feel.
I don’t quite know how they manage to do it, but they seem to find the nicest, warmest and most caring young people to work there. I don’t feel the warmth and caring for other places the way I feel it at the Mansion.
The Mansion is a Medicaid facility, they don’t get the richest people, or have the biggest budgets. The residents have many needs, often small, often quite personal, these needs are accessible to people like me. They have very limited resources. And they are accessible people like you, the Army Of Good.
I have worked hard to earn the trust of the staff and residents, and slowly, it has come. I will never violate that trust.
Here, we can actually afford to help people. I am a whiz now at buying special order socks, underwear, bras, sneakers and shoes, nightgowns, bathrobes, scarves, hats and jackets, large print books, realistic baby dolls and stuffed animals.
I am known at every Thrift Store in the area, and I can navigate the most remote corners of Amazon in a blink. I went to visit my Mother-In-Law Christmas week, and she let drop that she needed new cotton socks. I was on my Iphone in a flash and the socks arrived two days later. She couldn’t quite believe it.
The Mansion resident’s needs are not large like the refugees, they are small, like people at the edge of life who have never had much and who always expect little.
Doing this work, I developed my idea of small acts of great kindness, practical good, real work for real people in the real world. An act of good every day.
This fits with the people who call themselves the Army of Good. Some are my readers, many are not. They live all of the country, they send me $5 bills and checks for hundreds of dollars, when it is needed.
We are not a wealthy army, the Mansion residents give us the opportunity to do good without being billionaires. I am grateful to them for that. “I live in Kansas, far out in the country,” wrote Janet,”the Army of Good gives me the chance to do good and feel good.” Let others demonize an quarrel with each other.
We do good, we don’t argue about what good is.
Today, I brought small things to the residents torn from their familiar places so suddenly, and feeling so frail..
When I first saw Sylvie on Friday, she was so shaken she had to get into bed, I was worried about her. She didn’t look like Sylvie, she had no hat, or colorful skirt, or letters to write. She seemed lost.
But I know Sylvie well, and I know what she needs.
She needs her religious texts, which I brought today. She is a devoted Jehovah’s Witness, part of a congregation that loves and supports her.
She needs paper, envelopes and stamps, she has lost enough stamps to supply a real army. Rumors are she has 1,000 tucked away in a drawer. But she doesn’t seem to remember that.
She needs a hat with character and color. She wears a different hat each day. She needs Red to sick ‘his cold nose,” as she calls it, into her hand. She does not need or want stuffed animals. She will sometimes – rarely – play Bingo.
Sylvie needs someone to hear the beautiful and sometimes sorrowful stories of her life, the dog who ran a way, her diplomat father who took her across Europe after World War II, the boy friend who died, the illness in her head that sent her to one institution after another.
She never seeks pity, or complains about her very difficult life. She puts her faith in her God.
I brought her a hat today, a green winter cap, I brought her a Tote Bag from India to add to her Tote Bag collection – she has a dozen. I asked her what she puts in all of the bags, she said she wasn’t sure yet.
I brought her three packs of note cards, a score of envelopes, a dozen pens and pencils, and yes, 50 first class stamps. God knows where they will end up, most likely not on letters. I brought her two African Violets, set in a plastic bowl, no need of a vase.
One by one, these small things settled her, made her feel at home, made her feel secure and safe, helped her to understand that she was going home in a few days, that is was all right. She said Jehovah would take care of the rest, she would talk to him and pray to him.
When we left, she followed me into the hallway and shouted; “I love you, Jon. I love you Red. Please say hello to Maria.”
I love you, too, Sylvie. I think that’s the part I never expected, that’s the part that helps me to understand these hard-working young women who work at the Mansion, and who care for our mothers rather than go to McDonald’s for a pay raise.
Oh Jon, this just made my heart swell. It’s great to see Sylvie up, love her hat and tote bag. The simple things most of us don’t even think about, are the greatest acts of love. Thanks for sharing.
Some people leave the hard work of caring for our Mothers because they have families to support and need that McDonald’s pay raise.
Yes, we know, Debora, I don’t question anybody’s needs or motives. People do what they need to do. I don’t tell anyone else what to do or judge them.
How is Ali? And how is the soccer team doing?
Susie
Susie, sorry, I can’t offer updates daily on people I have written about. As far as I know, he’s doing fine, as I have mentioned several times on the blog. Thanks for caring.
Beautifully written, beautiful sentiment, beautiful reality. Thanks for writing. Brings perspective to my day.
I know you mean no harm, but it makes me a bit sad to read your negative comments from time to time about agencies such as RISSE. I do not know that one, have no connection at all to it, but I do have some experience with social justice work, and I just want to say that there may be good reasons for the discomfort and defensiveness of the administrators at such an agency over people like you “wander(ing) around”. There are so many things behind the scenes that anyone from outside can’t possibly know about, maybe especially for an agency dealing with refugees. On the other hand, the Mansion has less reason for defensiveness; there are very few people out to hurt old people, so they can afford to open their doors to volunteers a little more widely.
I know your intention is never to do harm, and you do promote the RISSE gift list, but I believe you may also be doing some unintentional harm by promoting doubt in the minds of your readers over the validity of social justice agencies like RISSE.
I know your negative comments are not frequent and perhaps I am taking it too personally, but this is because I worked for charities for most of my working life. It always pained me to hear the dismissive and often cynical comments people so easily made about our work, or about charities in general, without really knowing anything about the daily reality of it.
Marianna, thanks for the good and well-expressed thoughts, I appreciate them. I have supported RISSE for several years now in every way I can, and have helped them raise tens of thousands of dollars, as well as supported the soccer team, classroom supplies and even purchased large garbage cans for hundreds of dollars. I suggested the Wish List to them, and have continuously urged my readers to support them, which they have done. I am not a cheerleader for anybody, and I had some very painful times with RISSE, my worst angels suggested that I find somebody else to support and work with. I have listened to my better angels, and am glad, RISSE does good and important work. Just last week, we bought through a new and large and expensive RISSSE Amazon WIsh List, I promoted it every single day for two weeks.
I don’t mean any harm, and I’m sure you don’t either, and I respect what you are saying and hear it.
But I won’t lie or dissemble to make you or anyone else happy, I share my life openly and honestly, the good as well as the bad. I don’t do public relations, RISSE does that quite well for itself and I wish them the best of luck. The refugees need them, and I hope we can continue to support them. I reject your comparisons to the Mansion, both work in very difficult and stressful environments, I think it is way off base to suggest a Medicaid Assisted Care Facility is simpler to run than a non-profit social agency, neither of them is easy to operate in any way, both face staggeringly different bureaucracies with all kinds of regulations, speaking of not knowing about daily realities. I thank you for sharing your concerns, I will be frank with you and tell you I will continue writing the truth as it flows through my life, I am not here only to make people happy. We are all responsible for what we do, even people who work in non-profit agencies. I will continue to support RISSE in every possible way. And I will continue to be honest, without that, I am just another hack without much purpose. And thank you for caring. Best wishes to you…P.S. Marianne, for me to withhold my feelings because it might make someone queasy is the same thing as lying to my readers. I promised when I started the blog that I would tell the truth, even if it is unpleasant. I try to do that every day.
Thank you for your reply. I’m sorry, I think my words may have come out sharper than I intended, or maybe I did not express myself well. I have read your blog long enough that I would not ask you to be dishonest or change your writing to make me happy. ? I wrote out of my own experience of working for charities whose existence is so precarious on a daily basis. People are often not aware of the very many pressures on charities, pulling them in all directions as they struggle to survive. Sometimes negative publicity can be “the straw that breaks the camel’s back” even when no harm is intended. That is what I was trying to communicate.
My comparison of the refugee agency with the Mansion was about their clientele, not their operations. I know all about the many regulations applied to care homes, it is the same in my country. I meant to say that, to me, the defensive reaction to volunteers from an agency that works with refugees is maybe understandable.
None of the above is meant to discount your personal experience with that particular agency, which was obviously painful and frustrating. I guess your comments from time to time over the last year or so about the situation triggered a protective/defensive reaction from me on behalf of all the ragged and shoestring charities I know and love. For some reason today I needed to express this. Thank you for listening.
Marianne, I thank you for your message. I think I understood it completely. I wasn’t telling you how you feel, I was talking about how I feel. I did not feel assaulted or insulted in any way, there was nothing offensive in what you wrote me, it is very hard to translate true feelings in this kind of medium, where we can’t see one another.
I have no need of deleting this, it is an important honest message from you, and I think people should see it. I appreciate your good words. What I was conveying was my deeply held belief that I need to be honest about my feelings, and not hide them from my readers. I believe this is a major reason my blog is successful in a very crowded world. I do understand how non-profits work, and I think it’s important for me to say despite the very difficult time I had with RISSE I still am supporting the group and still am urging others to support it. It’s important to say we disagree – but that we are not enemies. It is a good group doing good work. You are not in any way accusing me of lying, but I feel I am lying if I don’t tell the truth. There is no offense taken and I much appreciate your warmth and openness. You were just being honest, me too. From my perspective that is the way it ought to be, that is what it should be. So thank you and please stay in touch, your message is a model of civility and thoughtfulness,and I appreciate it.
Well, I hit post too soon. I should have added another thought from my heart, which is also true, and that is that I appreciate your blog very much. I (almost ?) always enjoy reading what you have to say about things, and they give me lots to think about. So thank you. Usually when I disagree I don’t feel inclined to comment, but this time I just felt a need to do so.
No problem, Marianne, people are always welcome to disagree with me, especially when they do so in so civil and thoughtful a way. Happy New Year to you.
Final comment: whatever you want to do is fine, but it is ok with me if you delete our conversation. I usually only comment on a blog post when I feel very deeply about something but most often my feelings don’t come out properly, which is to say, in a truthful but non offensive and non hurtful way. I can tell this is so by your response which took me by surprise because you replied to something different from what I thought I said. ? Then I tried again in an as yet unpublished comment, but I don’t think I succeeded. Words are not my medium, I think, and online conversations are too fraught.
I wish you the very best in everything. Once in a while I stumble upon a blog that helps me to think about some of the deep questions in my own life. Yours is one of those. I think it is because you help put into words the deep questions that only appear as images and feelings to me, and that helps me understand things a little better. Your answers to those questions are your own, and true to you, and I would not want you to write about them in any other way. I’m sorry if I implied differently.